My Two Selves

Yesterday I did some work with my therapist trying to clear some confusion from my head. She asked me to have a debate between my "thinking" self and my emotional self. I changed positions on each end of the couch in order to have this debate. Essentially, my thinking self told my emotional self that it was the reason for all my problems, and my emotional self was a smartass and said, "Oh yeah, well without me you can't feel a damn thing."

I've done a lot of good work with the therapist and on my own lately. Some things I've discovered:

• I may have married my foreign-born husband who has a totally different culture than mine, a different lifestyle, a different way of loving, to escape everything that was known to me. Yet there is still a small child in me that cries for the familiar -- who wants to have things and relationships that are very familiar.
• I need love and affection because I have old wounds that need to be healed. It's OK to need those things.
• My thinking self tries to stay in control, pushing the emotional side away, so that it can remain in control. But that does something bad to the emotional side that I'm not completely sure of ... but am working on figuring it out.
• When R. -- the other man in my life -- tells me that my marriage sucks, I feel ashamed and judged and it causes that emotional side to throw up a big wall.

My husband has a new job now ... he's moving away. I'm staying put, at least for now. I may never join him. It all feels weird, but that it is happening without decisions being made.

Change, fear and acceptance

Change happens, fear appears -- we either act, accept or become paralyzed. For me, it's easy to become paralyzed on issues that really get to the heart of my underlying fears. While with recovery, it's easier to become accepting of things that I might otherwise have considered dramatic, I can become paralyzed either in addiction, procrastination, or avoidance.

I am currently trying to decide ... trying to hear my heart, avoid my own willfulness ... about whether to leave my husband, how to do it, when, etc. I can't hear the answer clearly. Even though it's getting clearer, I still get confused. I know it's because there is interference between me and my HP. Or maybe I'm not listening with the right ears, the right heart. I hear the truth -- there is no emotional support, no physical intimacy, no friendship, just a partnership and a lot of familiarity. Hell, I'm familiar with a lot of things. Doesn't make them good.

I guess I am learning patience -- boy, am I tired of it. I feel like my life is on hold and I'm sitting here spinning my wheels, knowing there is something better out there, seeing it with my own eyes.

But ... I'm not sitting still. Things are changing. The acceptance I talked about is one of them. Two weeks ago, I miscarried a child I didn't know I was carrying. I have felt confused ... confused about even how to feel. The child may have been my husband's or it may have been the child of someone else, but the child did not come to full life. I accept that the HP that controls the bigger universe knows that there are multiple reasons that child was never born.

After that miscarriage, I saw clearly that my husband (who had no idea the child might not be his) will never be able to support my emotional needs. I accept that it might have taken something this tragic for me to realize the depth of his emotional unavailability. In fact, I've known all along throughout my years of acting out that I could get pregnant if I continued to act out and go on sexual binges. And, even as I write, I accept that I have not supported my husband's expectations and need for fidelity and support either. I accept that I am the only person who can decide if I am willing to continue in the marriage and there are reasons it shouldn't be an easy decision.

I have also seen in all of this my pattern for seeking out love where it is not available. I have realized that over the years, starting with the biological father who caused my existence but never claimed it, then the stepfather who began sexually abusing me when I was three -- I have wanted men to love me who don't have the capacity to love me. Sitting at home this past week, I was reading back over a journal that I have kept since 1989, and saw that a male friend, a guy I called my best friend, has consistently not been there for me for more than 17 years. But I kept going back to him for love, not romantic love, just the emotional support that a person needs when they are happy, sad, or hurting. Never once when I really needed him, has he been there. It caused me to think of other men, friends and lovers... all I wanted was for them to simply love me, to see my worth, to not use me, to be there for me as I would do anything for them, to win their love, acceptance and support. But I've never been willing to walk away and simply love myself, to care enough about myself to fill that hole in my heart with the power of the greater universe, my HP. My need for and attraction to those emotionally unavailable people was based on history ... needing to right old wrongs. I see these patterns now, and it is helping me to accept them, to walk away, and see the truth.

My stepfather, who I had purposely not talked to in more than a year, called me last week after he heard about the miscarriage. He said he was sorry to hear about what had happened. At the time the call came it was disturbing, I could have wailed and railed. I could even have pretended that I actually knew whether it was guilt or true concern that caused his call. But the point is ... it is what it is. He called. It was more than what some people who I've sought to right his wrongs with did.

I don't know

Where to start ... I sit here today, having thought of all the consequences of the disease of addiction ... thinking about so many things, thinking about numbness, realizing that I just had a miscarriage of a pregnancy without knowing who the father of the child was. It could have been my husband's, it could have been my lover's, it could have been two or three guys I met during a "binge" in my addiction. The percentage goes to my lover ... but that's almost not the point. A life has been lost, people are feeling sorry for me because I have miscarried. And no one, not even me, knows the truth.
I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm just sitting here with my mouth open wondering how far will this all go.

Today

As I start my day today I have so many men crammed into my head that I am worn out just thinking of them. And, yet, to escape, I spent a few hours online last night and probably more today chatting with more men who are trying to escape the humdrumness of their lives. I just finished reading "The World According to Garp," by John Irving. A predominant theme is how powerful lust can be, and the damages it can do in relationships. Lust ... it doesn't even seem to be the word I should use for the force that draws me to other men. Obsession seems to be a better term.

This evening I will meet a man at a motel for sex. I've had sex with him once before. Quite frankly he is less than desirable, but his own lust makes him persistent. I am just ready to be rid of him. So, I'll fuck him one last time and then tell him I can't see him again because my lover is moving closer and I can't risk being caught by either my husband or my lover. That was my plan, and then he was out of touch today ... so, I guess I won't fuck him, but I am going to have to get rid of him.

There is another man who has professed his love to me ... his undying devotion. He has lost his job, is going through divorce, and is about to head into bankruptcy, but the most prevalent thought in his mind is that he has found the woman of his dreams -- me. The only problem is, it's becoming more and more obvious to me that he is not the man of my future. He is not responsible for his own shit, and depends upon me for his happiness. I don't have enough to give for that.

And now my sponsor -- yes, the one who is supposed to support me -- continues to seduce me, to tell me he loves me so deeply that the only way he can show his love for me is to seduce me into phone sex. Then he is silent. I received an e-mail from him at lunch saying that I should not obsess over men who eat human flesh with a nice chianti. Basically, he was saying that he doesn't want to play, that he controls the faucet for when we intrigue and when we are just good friends. Tell me this? How is this different than the way I have been treated by the men who have hurt me most ... my stepfather who incested me and my husband who is sexual only when he wants it? All I want from them, need from them, expect from them is love. And all they need from me is sex.

I know that I just need to get back to my "real" life and leave all this behind. I am just not sure where my real life is.

After a long time and stuff

It's funny that after all this time, there are times when I get anxious and can feel myself, in boredom or in loneliness, wanting to go out in search of someone new. I don't want to do anything but just play with them ... maybe just online, probably so. I just want something to fill the void. But even when I try now, I can't really get the hit.
My sponsor in the sex addiction recovery program successfully seduced me a couple of weeks ago. That is somewhat unbelievable. I haven't sorted out the feelings on that. At some level that is numb, I feel betrayed, and I feel shame and guilt. I don't know if it's best I not feel at the moment. I feel a little overwhelmed with feelings.
I am seeing someone now, seriously considering leaving my husband -- not for the other person, although there is talk of "our future." Rather I am beginning to see that there has been truth all along in my feeling that there is something missing in my life and in my marriage. The age old question arises -- do I accept what is, or do I reach out for something more? That something more feels challenging, sometimes in a good way, at other times in an uncomfortable way.
I don't know, just felt the need to connect here, to this old confessional. Only one person calls me Rae anymore. But I still know who Rae is.

Awake

Once again the addict has awaken me. Rather I should say I woke up from a dream, felt the emptiness in the bed beside me, and the addict took over my thoughts. My husband sometimes goes to work in the middle of the night -- yeah, he's really going to work, he has no time for other mistresses, this one minds his obsessions day and night. And sometimes while he's gone I wake up too. Sometimes I'll sit on the computer and chat with people who make their living at odd hours -- horny men or lonely men, just looking for someone to talk to. After all, I'm just a horny, lonely woman looking for someone to talk to and misery loves company.
But tonight I didn't even need the computer for the addict that lives inside me to get me all worked up. I'm addicted to escape -- usually it presents itself in an overwhelming urge to find someone to, simply put, fuck. It's the finding, not the fucking, that gives me the high. Sometimes the sweet taste of chocolate, bite after bite -- or even other foods -- that take me away. Tonight, I woke up rather obsessed about how in two weeks when I slip away for the weekend with a guy I frankly don't even like, who I know is an alcoholic, I'm going to drink vodka with him with wild abandon. He's going to smoke a million cigarettes, and I might even smoke some with him. And I know he's going to drink. The addict in me who has never shown herself to be an alcoholic, even in the college and after college years when I did drink on a regular basis, but now she craves a new vice. Sex isn't cutting it anymore. She even feels drunk and slurry as she writes. Oh, what sweet escape. How long will she scream?


By the way, for those of you who check in on me now and then ... I'm still alive. My recovery from addiction goes up and down and as you can read today -- it's on a down plane. But I've started to see a new therapist and am hopeful. I don't come here to write anymore. I'm not sure why. I've thought about it a few times -- both in times of acting out and in times of recovery. Could be because I never use "Rae" anymore. I've become "Staci" to all those horny, lonely men. But I'm still the addict who needs confession, especially on nights when she wakes up feeling drunk and aching for a drink, even though she hasn't had a drop. Cheers!